In The News

Mining Firm Set to Destroy Artifacts: The Age

Charlotte Grieve June 16, 2020
The economic slowdowns imposed to contain Covid-19 contribute to a glut in energy markets. “China Shenhua Energy, the world's largest thermal coalminer, is planning to construct an open-cut mine next to the Liverpool plains near Gunnedah in the ‘food bowl’ of the state,” reports Charlotte Grieve for the Age. The Gomeroi people maintain the project will ruin Aboriginal sites and artifacts...

North Korea Makes Millions Selling Sand: CNN

Joshua Berlinger June 10, 2020
North Korea is under UN sanctions for its nuclear-weapon programs, yet researchers with the Center for Advanced Defense Studies noticed heavy ship traffic near Haeju. North Korea typically evades sanctions by transferring commodities on the high seas. Relying on satellite imagery, the researchers determined more than 250 ships – lacking required International Maritime Organization identifiers –...

Warning on Mining Dam Disasters: BBC

David Shukman February 7, 2019
Companies mining for coal, copper and iron ore remove tons of material during the excavation process – only a small amount is valuable ore and the rest is rock and material contaminated with chemicals and other mining waste. “And the cheapest way to dispose of these remains is to create what's called a ‘tailings pond’ – a rather genteel term for a dumping-ground sealed with a dam,” explains...

The Wall Street Journal: China Is Winning the Global Race to Control Batteries

Scott Patterson and Russell Gold February 15, 2018
China listed electric vehicles as one of seven strategic priorities in 2011 and now dominates the markets for batteries from mining cobalt in Africa to production. More than half of the world’s cobalt is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and a Wall Street Journal articles describes small-scale miners, often working in unsafe conditions, selling ore to Chinese buyers. “Those buyers then...

China Set to Rescue Australia Economy at Just the Right Time

Michael Heath December 9, 2016
A precipitous decline in global commodity prices since 2011 left Australia struggling financially, but the recent Chinese stimulus spending brightened the economic prospects. Exports are increasing as Chinese manufacturing and industry ramps up, and Australia is “the developed world’s most China-dependent economy,” reports Michael Heath for Bloomberg. During the period of low commodity prices,...

In Your Phone, In Their Air

Peter Whoriskey October 28, 2016
Lithium batteries in smartphones and laptops include graphite. “The companies making those products promote the bright futuristic possibilities of the ‘clean’ technology,” reports Peter Whoriskey for the Washington Post. “But virtually all such batteries use graphite, and its cheap production in China, often under lax environmental controls, produces old-fashioned industrial pollution.” China...

Opportunities, Not Oppression, to Stop Illegal Mining in the Peruvian Amazon

David J.X. Gonzalez February 18, 2016
Environmental degradation and human-rights abuses are often associated with small, illegal mining operations around the world. Peru, among the world's major gold producers, offers a case study on how local development could help solving a global problem. About 20 percent of Peru’s gold production comes from illegal and informal mines, and a crackdown on the small miners causes more problems...